Saturday, August 06, 2011

Victrix send in the Heavies!

Of course if you have the light's you have to have the heavies!

Seems Christmas has come very early this year if you are a Peninsular fan.

We have just taken delivery of our eagerly awaited British heavy dragoons 1808-1812. These are to be used in the Spanish Peninsular War.They have been sculpted by the ubiquitous and talented Paul Hicks. The detail is great on these figures, up to Pauls usual crisp and clear standards.

There is a pack of command consisting of officer, bugler and Guidon bearer. The officer is wearing a shako with turned up peak, often worn by many Dragoon regiments prior to the late 1812 reforms. We will make a version off officer in Bicorne also.

The trooper pack contains three figures with a spine of 6 separate right sword arms to add a huge amount of variety and movement to your units.They should really cut a dash as they gallop recklessly at anything that moves on the battlefield!


We have also added a new British Heavy Dragoon regiment deal. This consists of 18 figures (5 packs of troopers and 1 pack of command) for ONLY £55. This saves you a whopping £11 from the normal retail price!


Also now that we have British heavy and light cavalry, artillery, line troops, colonels and Generals we have put togther a new British army deal

3 x VX0002 Centre Companies
1 x VX0004 Flank Companies
5 x VX0030 British Light Dragoon Troopers
1 x VX0031 British Light Dragoon Command
5 x VX0032 British Heavy Dragoon Troopers
1 x VX0033 British Heavy Dragoon Command
1 x VX0010 Artillery
2 x VX0001 Peninsular Colonels
1 x VX0003 Generals

price should be £269.75 - 25% = 202.32 which we will round down to £200 therefore saving you a fantastic £69.75. Well worth taking advantage of to get that Peninsular Britsh army on the battlefield.

Well what can we say that we didn't say about the lights! Not much really. Hicks is a good as ever, not that the Perry's do a Peninsular range, but with Victrix you know you have a perfect match size wise, but at the same time you have figures that are instantly recognisable as not being Perry, which is a good thing as they add to the variety rather than just being clones.

There are four horse poses, the lights had three, though it appears that they share one pose in common with the lights. I don't mean this in any negative sense at all but there seems something 'old school' about the horses which I just can't quite put my finger on, maybe they are reminiscent of Hinchliffe from the old days, maybe I have just seen too many Perry horses!

I like having the 'arm' sprue, as much as I have moaned about assembling Victrix figures I do actually like the variety of poses that they enable you to build, getting the right balance between quick to assemble and variety is difficult especially as different people have different requirements for example painting services probably wan't quick to assemble as time is money(!!), whilst someone painting a vignette wants variety and doesn't care about assembly time as he is only going to assemble a handful anyway. Victrix seem to be trying hard to get that balance right which has to be applauded.

From the pic's they seems to mix up quite well, gives a real impression of a typical out of control British cavalry charge, would love to see these painted.

Victrix have a couple of 'special deals' at the moment from a GBP55.00 for an 18 figure 'regiment' to GBP200 for an 'army' that gives you 208 infantry, 3 guns and 15 crew, 36 metal cavalry, 3 generals and 6 colonels.

Also if you are outside Europe then I believe you can buy them VAT free from Victrix, which means 20% off the list price and also you should note that Warlord Games stock the Victrix range (thought seemingly not any of the special 'deals') and they offer free shipping on top of the 'VAT free' 20% discount.

As with the lights these are unlikely to be on my shopping list any time soon simply because the Peninsular isn't in my crosshairs for the next few years, but if it was, I would pick these up without any hesitation, I really can't find anything bad to say about them at all other than why didn't Victrix do these a year ago before the Russians!

Victrix certainly seem to have picked up the pace recently, I hope they can maintain that and I hope we continue to see them bring more cohesiveness to the range, can't wait to see what the next few month's will bring.

More Info:
Victrix Site
Heavy Dragoon Deal GBP55.00
British Peninsular Army Deal GBP200.00
British Heay Dragoons 1808-1812 (3 figure pack) GBP11.00
British Heavy Dragoon command 1808-1812(3 figure pack) GBP11.00




Now you see I managed to get through the whole post without once mentioning how your British Army will have everything it needs except the horses to move its Artillery!

3 comments:

BigRedBat said...

The horses are from the eBob masters, although acceptable, I'm personally not mad on them. But the riders look very nice, and I just love all the bicornes.

Simon

Robert said...

Thanks for that, for some reason I had forgotten about EBob's involvement.

Some of EBob's horses are really good, the Ehmke-Art horses that are shown elsewhere on this blog are from EBob and I love most 'em, but some are so so as you say......

I think EBob, in general, favors 'realistic', whereas the Perry's favor 'looks good' if you get the fine distinction.

I did think at first the heavies didn't actually look 'heavy' enough but then again it is often said that in reality there wasn't a lot of difference between a heavy and light horse and in Spain I doubt horse flesh was in its best shape anyway.

BigRedBat said...

It's the rearing pose that I don't like, the legs are fragile, too.

Enjoying your blog!

Simon